DuPont Opens Ukrainian Seed Facility to Meet HIgh Demand

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- DuPont Co., the largest U.S.
chemical company by market value, is opening a seed plant in
Ukraine tomorrow to meet increasing demand in the region that
supplies corn and sunflower products.

The facility, with a planned annual capacity of 500,000
units and the potential to expand, cost DuPont $41.5 million,
Jeffrey D. Rowe, the regional director for DuPont Pioneer
Europe, said in an interview in Kiev today. The central
Ukrainian plant will process seeds from this year’s harvest
mostly for sale to domestic customers in 2014, Rowe said. Some
output may be shipped to Russia.

“We feel that Ukraine is in a great position because of
the location, the access to the Black Sea region, the ability to
export, the ability to improve productivity on hectares that are
in production right now and the ability to bring new hectares
into production,” Rowe said.

Ukraine is the world’s biggest supplier of sunflower seed
oil and the fourth-biggest exporter of corn in the marketing
year ending Sept. 30 after the U.S., Argentina and Brazil,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statistics.
Farmers increased corn plantings for the 2013 harvest by 48
percent to 2.8 million hectares as of May 3, Ukraine’s state
statistics office shows.

The seed input will allow Ukrainian farmers to increase
exports, “which the world needs,” Rowe said. Ukraine is “in a
very good position” for export increase.

DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Co.’s agriculture division, is a
market leader in Ukraine in production of corn seeds and the
second-biggest producer of sunflower seeds, he said.

Yield Potential

The country, which has 32.5 million hectares of arable
land, has “a very good potential to dramatically increase the
yields,” and is “a fantastic area” to grow corn and
sunflower, he said. Ukraine’s average corn yields fell by more
than 25 percent last year to 4.8 tons per hectare because of
drought.

DuPont will use its global research to select products for
Ukrainian farmers, in particular to supply seeds resistant to
drought and heat stress, Rowe said.

If global commodity prices do not decline further than 15
percent to 20 percent, Ukraine will be increasing corn and
sunflower planting areas in the future, Rowe said. He declined
to give a forecast for the Ukrainian corn and sunflower harvest.

Macroeconomics for agriculture will continue to stay strong
as global commodity prices continue to be “relatively high,”
he said.

“I would expect double-digit growth to continue,” Rowe
said. DuPont’s sales in agriculture rose 13.7 percent to $10.4
billion in 2012 from a year ago and had a 16.8 percent increase
in 2011, according to its website.